SUMMIT IN VANCOUVER

SUMMIT IN VANCOUVER; CLINTON PRESENTS BILLION TO YELTSIN IN U.S. AID PACKAGE

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN,

Published: April 4, 1993

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 3—
As President Clinton and President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia began their first summit meeting today, Mr. Clinton presented the Russian leader with some $1 billion in American aid programs intended to support Russian democrats and spur the Western allies to make Russian reform their top foreign policy priority.

Among the new or expanded programs in the package were loan guarantees to build apartments for demobilized Russian soldiers; loans for Russian entrepreneurs; medical supplies, food and grain assistance; funds to help the Russian Government sell state-owned industries, and technical advisers to help repair pipelines and oil wells and begin exporting again.

Mr. Clinton said the package was intended to help promote free-market skills on a grass-roots level in both Moscow and the Russian countryside, so the movement toward democratic reform would continue no matter who governs in the Kremlin. Cold-War Laws Cited

But while aides said the two men had hit if off personally, the leaders also voiced complaints on several issues. Mr. Yeltsin complained bitterly to Mr. Clinton about laws from the cold war era still on the books in the United States, like those that tie Russia's trading privileges with the United States to Moscow's relaxation of emigration restrictions, and laws that restrict American investment in Russian high-tech industries that have potential military uses, like communications technology.

Mr. Yeltsin argued that Russia's behavior has changed so fundamentally that these laws should be repealed. The Russian leader also complained about the collision of an American submarine with a Russian submarine in the Barents Sea two weeks ago, for which Mr. Clinton expressed his regret. Russian Military Send-Off

Mr. Clinton voiced his concern about the behavior of Russian Army troops based in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, where they have been accused of siding with a separatist movement, and about the pace of Russian withdrawal from the Baltic republics, which was suspended this week.

Mr. Clinton and Mr. Yeltsin arrived in Vancouver this morning. Mr. Clinton flew in from Portland, Ore., where he moderated a conference between the timber industry and environmentalists, and Mr. Yeltsin came from Moscow, where he was seen off by the country's military leadership in a signal that they would insure that no one would try to topple the Russian leader while he was gone for the two-day summit meeting.

Mr. Yeltsin, who just narrowly survived a vote to remove him from office by the Russian Congress last weekend, said he would be running the country "by telephone" and that the "nuclear button" was in safe hands.

The Vancouver Province newspaper greeted the two leaders with various irreverent headlines, including "Bold Boris Comes Cap In Hand" and "For a Look At Bubba and the Bear Try These Sites."

Security around the meeting sites was provided by 2,000 Mounties, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They guarded all access roads; all manhole covers were sealed and all mailboxes and newsstands were removed. Anthems in the Rain

Mr. Yeltsin stepped off his Aeroflot jetliner into a pouring rain and brushed aside an attempt by aides to protect him with an umbrella. He stood ramrod straight in the downpour as the Canadian and Russian national anthems were played.

Shortly after their arrival, the two Presidents drove through the gray mist to the campus of the University of British Columbia, on a wooded promontory overlooking the Pacific. They were joined for lunch there by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada at the sprawling Mediterranean-style home of the university's president. Mr. Mulroney, speaking of Mr. Yeltsin, told reporters after the lunch, "He and the President seem to be getting along like a house afire."

After bidding farewell to Mr. Mulroney, Mr. Clinton and Mr. Yeltsin took a brief walk through a wood of shaggy evergreens to the university's Museum of Anthropology and then sat down to their first one-on-one session, with only note-takers and interpreters present.

What was most striking about this get-together was the degree to which both men appeared to be looking over their shoulders at their domestic fronts, as much as across the table at each other.

Mr. Clinton, apparently worried about polls showing many Americans opposed to increasing foreign aid for Russia at a time when they are being asked to cut domestic programs, promised that the United States would not try to solve Russia's problems alone.

"I want America to act, but America cannot and should not act alone." Mr. Clinton said in his regular Saturday radio program, broadcast as he arrived in Vancouver. "Just as we mobilized the world on behalf of war in the gulf, we must now mobilize the world on behalf of peace and reform in Russia." Dangers of Too Much Aid

Mr. Yeltsin, who has been under attack by Communists and nationalists in the Russian Congress who say he has sold out to the West, said on arrival that while his country needed Western help, too much of it would not be good because his opponents would only use it to paint him as a lackey of Washington.